


shadows

by superfluouskeys



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Post-War, obvi a little AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-08 06:29:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16424183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: She had heard.  Known.  Been glad, even.  In Hermione's opinion, death is nearly never better, never deserved, for who is to say when a person is beyond saving?  Still, it's like seeing a ghost, or the beginnings of a nightmare.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just some more vague postulating for the Bellamione discord, but I might actually continue this one.

Harry is all about mending fences after the war ends.  Maybe a bit too much about it, all things considered, but everyone copes in his own way, and Harry would prefer to pretend at closure than to acknowledge that things nearly never wrap up as neatly as one would like.

Ron and Ginny, as a natural extension of their family, are not naturally inclined towards mending fences.  The Weasleys are the sort to hold righteous grudges, a trait which can be both a tremendously endearing credit and a tremendously frustrating flaw, often at the same time.

Hermione is more practically minded.  Since the war has ended, life must go on, and supposing one wishes to make something of her life, one cannot just simply pretend a significant portion of the wizarding world no longer exists simply because it is unpleasant.  So, when Harry gets caught on the notion of mending fences with the Malfoy family, Hermione allows herself to be dragged along.

The small gathering is uniquely uncomfortable.  Hermione doesn't know how she'll explain to Harry that just because someone doesn't actively want him dead, or, less specifically, doesn't actively want the utter destruction of the world as they know it, doesn't mean they'll have something to chat about over tea.  But the manor is big enough to wander whilst Harry and a handful of other prominent 'representatives' make nice, and it's really rather beautiful when one is not being tortured in it.

Hermione isn't the sort of person who attracts attention when she doesn't try to, a fact which used to drive her to acts of utter madness in the hopes of the barest sliver of recognition, but as she's grown up, she's realized that blending in can be a tremendous asset.  No one pays her much mind now, for example, and she is ostensibly free to roam the halls of an old wizarding mansion in peace.

She strolls with arms folded subconsciously across her chest, observes face after cruel, hard face sneering at her from each family portrait she passes, positively shivers when her eye catches on a portrait of the three Black sisters with a dark explosion right in the center.

They're much younger in the picture, but Hermione would know either of them anywhere.  Right next to one another, she can even see the family resemblance: each holds her head proudly and curls her lip just so, a smile both beautiful and cold.

Without meaning to, Hermione draws nearer, captivated by a young Bellatrix Lestrange, eyes clear of madness and even of malice, haughty but not deranged.  Not unlike uncovering the history of Tom Riddle, it's disturbing to think of Bellatrix, who haunts Hermione's nightmares, as just another person one might come across in the course of a lifetime.  She remembers hearing about how people liked Riddle, even trusted him, and tries to imagine a circumstance in which it could have been the same with Bellatrix.

Just beyond the stilted chatter from the other room, Hermione becomes aware of piano music somewhere above her.  Her eyes follow the gilded banister that follows the staircase nearest her, wondering idly whether she is allowed to go upstairs unaccompanied and, setting that aside, whether doing so is a good idea.  Mending fences or not, who knows what horrors still lurk in a place such as this?

Still, the music is enchanting, all the more so the longer she listens, and Hermione fears she will never grow immune to the thrill of doing something just slightly outside the bounds of polite behaviour.

She ascends the stairs cautiously, expecting an alarm or, perhaps a bit foolishly, some kind of medieval trap, but is met only with the disapproving stares of more family portraits that line the walls.  The tune is familiar, something she's sure she recognizes, but if it's sounding in the halls of this place, she doubts very much that it's a Muggle composer.

A part of her is on high alert, reminding her with increasing notes of desperation that she should definitely not be up here, should just go back to the little party and grit her teeth and ask the hosts where that enchanting music is coming from, but still her feet carry her onward, and her eyes grow heavy-lidded in response to the swell in the melody.  Her parents loved classical music, before they—

And when she was a little girl, and the weather grew stormy enough to frighten her, they pulled out something grand and sweeping.  They opened all the windows and turned the volume up high, and together they danced and twirled to the song and the storm alike.

Hermione stops cold, and the memory fades.

She had heard.  Known.  Been glad, even, for in Hermione's opinion, death is nearly never better, never deserved, for who is to say when a person is beyond saving?  She has thought this as recently as a few moments prior, gazing upon the face of a younger and saner woman immortalized in a family portrait.

Still, it's like seeing a ghost, or the beginnings of a nightmare.

Bellatrix Lestrange sits at a grand piano, posture perfect, long, dark hair and long, dark gown falling all around her, a shadow in a sun-streaked room.  Her eyes are half-closed, and she plays, expressive yet restrained, beautiful, yet somehow heart-wrenching.

Hermione ought to leave.

She ought never to have come here, to this room or to this house, Harry would have been fine without her, just like everyone is always fine without her—better off, even, from Harry to Ron to her parents, so Hermione should just go downstairs, say her goodbyes, and—

"Not enjoying the festivities?" Bellatrix wonders coolly as she plays.

 _I'm sorry to disturb you, I'll just be going, oh Merlin, what am I doing here?_   "It's a lovely piece," she hears herself say as though from a great distance.  "I...sort of couldn't resist it."

"Hm," says Bellatrix as her left hand crosses the right with a flourish both musical and visual.  "Lucida Nightingor," she continues at the start of the next phrase.  "The wife of the famous Alastair Nightingor, although I suppose you wouldn't know anything about that—" another flourish, in time with the _t_ , "—would you?"

"Lucida Nightingor," Hermione echoes, too distracted to pay the insult much mind.  "Her husband drove her mad," she continues vaguely, in the way of old knowledge half-remembered.  "Wasn't it speculated that he stole her work?"

"Stole," Bellatrix scoffs airily.  "As though a woman's work is her own.  How can he steal what is his under the law?"

"But that law was changed," Hermione insists.  "And people were—"

"People," Bellatrix spits, "do not know, and do not want to.  Why, it's only a Mudblood and a madwoman speaking of it now, a century too late, and no one cares what either one of us has to say."

Hermione falls silent, feeling somehow too vulnerable to lash out.

"Incidentally," Bellatrix continues as the music changes, "a handful of pieces were published under her name, even after her marriage.  They were the ones dear Alastair deemed too simple to bear his illustrious name, I'm sure, but they hold their own charm in that respect."

Hermione has drawn nearer without realizing it, and now she can clearly see the heavy chains upon Bellatrix's ankles catching the light beneath her dark gown.  Bellatrix affords Hermione a sideways glance, derisive, dismissive, but decidedly lucid.  Utterly divorced from the unhinged woman Hermione remembers.

"You're looking...very well, all things considered," Hermione dares, clumsily.

"Such glowing praise," Bellatrix drawls, with only the faintest hint of the mocking singsong Hermione remembers.  "What a wonder you haven't stolen my heart already."

"I'm glad you're alive," Hermione says, too loudly, and all in a rush. 

The music stops short, and Bellatrix looks directly up at her with an unreadable expression.  "Are you," she says coolly, not even nearly a question.

Hermione lifts her chin proudly, not unlike the portrait of the three Black sisters.  "Yes," she says.

Bellatrix stands, slowly, movements smooth like the flowing gown she wears, and with each passing moment she grows further from the madwoman Hermione remembers and nearer to the portrait Hermione could not previously have imagined.  Hermione remembers a monster, with a hunched back and twisted features and a mad, terrible face.  This woman stands tall and her features, though sharp, are not ugly by any stretch of the imagination.  Indeed, Hermione finds herself momentarily flung out of the confines of her reality, faced with a stranger instead of a ghost and a nightmare, and for the duration of that moment, she is dazzled by Bellatrix's beauty.

"And why is that?" Bellatrix wonders, with the faintest hint of menace just beneath her surface of her tone, and the edges of the universe fall back into place around them.  "Is this fitting enough a punishment for you?  Granger?" she draws out the name with the utmost disgust, gesturing down to the shackles on her feet, and then she leans in, looming.  "Would a fiery explosion have been a bit overkill, in your expert opinion?"

Hermione holds her head higher, finds that she must to meet Bellatrix's burning gaze, finds that she is not nearly so immune to Bellatrix's beauty even now, when she is suddenly so much closer to the monster Hermione remembers.

But there is the monster, and then there is this woman, who plays the piano and spins a tale of a woman driven mad, her life's work stolen from her by a man who purported to love her, and in spite of everything, Hermione cannot bring herself to wish an utter end to the woman who stands before her.

"How fortunate I am," Bellatrix continues, again with the shadow of mocking singsong, "that the Righteous Mudblood deems me worthy of life.  I shall tell you, that makes exactly one person who wouldn't prefer I had died."

"Not even you?" Hermione challenges before she has fully intended to speak, and she steps forward even despite a desperate part of herself still begging her to turn tail and run.

Bellatrix lets out a little huff, something like halfhearted derision, or mirthless amusement.  "A fine life I've been left with," she says quietly, then returns to the piano bench and starts up playing another tune, something low and dark like distant thunder.

"Our Lucida was a fool, did you know?" Bellatrix continues, cool and detached once more.

"A fool?" Hermione echoes.

"She was by all accounts the better musician.  But she fancied herself _in love_ ," Bellatrix sneers.  "Alastair laid on the charm, and she diminished herself to fit neatly into the shadow of a lesser man."

Hermione traces a finger along the edge of the piano, averts her eyes so she has the courage to ask, "And you?"

She feels rather than sees Bellatrix look up, but the music does not falter.  "I have never been so foolish as to fancy myself in love with any man," she replies crisply.  "But some of us are not so fortunate as the Queen Mudblood and her enlightened opinion that because a law is changed the people will follow it gladly."

Hermione looks up, and Bellatrix returns her attention to the keys.  The music swells, effusive, emotional, gripping, but Bellatrix's posture and expression do not change.

"As far as I could tell," Bellatrix continues, so quietly her voice might well be a part of the piece she plays, "the only choice I had was in whose shadow I might tread."

The melody rises again, a soaring melisma over dense chords in the bass as it comes to a heavy and dark conclusion.  "You'd better get back to the party, _Miss Granger_."  Again she draws out Hermione's name like it's an insult upon her lips.  But then, to Hermione's surprise, the corner of her lip twitches into a smirk that bears no malice.  "Merlin help you if anyone in attendance learns you preferred my company to everyone else combined."


	2. Chapter 2

Ron and Ginny, though not naturally inclined towards mending fences, are all about Halloween parties.  So much so that they will gladly attend even a party held at the Malfoy Manor, on the assurance that they need only make a little nice with the hosts, and may spend the remainder of their time indulging in sweets and Butterbeer.

If Hermione thought the mansion was spectacular on an ordinary visit, she was utterly unprepared for the splendor of such a major event.  Everything from the outside of the house to its many and varied guests seems to sparkle, some in garish costumes, others in fine gowns, but it is abundantly clear in every case that no expense has been spared.

Hermione, herself, has not fared very well on Hallows Eves past.  Her parents were not fond of the holiday, and though a part of her had been delighted for the chance to celebrate it once her magical proclivity had granted her a fresh perspective, things have never quite worked out in her favour on that front.

She has opted to err on the side of a pretty dress, unsure of what costumes are socially acceptable in the realm of high society Purebloods, but this, too, leaves her feeling out of step from the start.  She is reminded of a time not so long past when she was desperate for the approval of her peers, and of the many and varied lengths she had gone to for the meager reward of a few moments' notoriety.

To be pretty is not such an accomplishment, and it is a double-edged sword.  Still, it puts people at ease to believe you will bend over backwards to please their fickle fancies, and Hermione has come here to mend fences.

Ron is all puffed up and preening, holds her close to his side like a prize as they enter, and this, too, makes Hermione regret her choice.  She has not quite figured out how to untangle herself from him, from a decision she made when she thought her hours might be numbered, and a strange and desperate part of herself did not want to die all alone.

But the war has ended, and life must go on, and though Hermione does not want to lose Ron's friendship, she also does not particularly want to continue kissing him, let alone going any further.  And that will require the sort of serious conversation for which neither of them is very well equipped.  And so he holds her close to his side, and she swallows the way it sickens her.

Strangely enough, the larger assemblage of people proves far easier to tolerate than the small gathering she and Harry attended last.  Hermione has never been very good with strangers, and she has always wondered whether Harry would be if not for his reputation, but in this realm, Ron and Ginny excel, when they are not preoccupied with hating complete strangers based on rumours about their suspicious loyalties.

The party is pleasant, even fun in fragments, but Hermione quickly tires of being fastened to Ron's side, and so eventually manages to strike out on her own with the vague excuse of seeing someone to whom she must say hello, and the far more immediate intention of finding herself something a bit stronger to drink.

The bartender, a girl who can't be much older than Hermione, who wears an expression of the utmost boredom more prominently than any physical feature, is more than happy to oblige her request.  Not even a year prior, Hermione would have balked at the notion of drinking under any circumstances, but to say that desperate times have softened her stance on the matter would be a bit of an understatement.

It's comforting to have a drink in hand while she wanders a sea of faces only distantly familiar, and the burn of alcohol in her throat is a welcome distraction from the reality of her circumstances.  She becomes acutely aware of the music that has underscored the evening's festivities thus far, string instruments just slightly removed from the Muggle equivalents that still feel much more familiar to her, but they are instruments without artists, floating in mid-air and playing by themselves.

"Foolish party trick," says a voice Hermione feels she would know anywhere, quieter than the din of the people around her, yet somehow far clearer, more immediate, "if you ask me."

Hermione turns, but the voice is not just over her shoulder, the way it seemed, nor can she spot the imposing shadow she expects anywhere amongst the partygoers.  Instead, her eyes meet with Ron's across the room, and he raises his Butterbeer and waves her over jovially.

The disembodied voice of Bellatrix Lestrange chuckles darkly.  "Run back to your shadow, Granger."

"Where are you?" Hermione demands, and she's certain from Ron's perspective, she looks about wildly like a madwoman.

"What's the matter, Granger?" Bellatrix teases.  "Afraid of a little game?  Or has your mind rusted up already?  No wonder, by the look of him."

Perhaps motivated by indignance, Hermione focuses her attentions on the clues she has been offered, and her gaze settles upon a room she hadn't noticed before, even though she's certain she looked that way already.

"Clever Mudblood," Bellatrix drawls, almost sweetly, and as much as the sound sets her nerves on edge, it also entices.

"'Mione!" she hears above the music and the chatter, and she turns over her shoulder, hesitant.  She'll have a hard time explaining this later.  She remembers what Bellatrix said to her the last time they met—Merlin help her if—but Hermione has spent far too much time already wondering what might have been under better circumstances.  She waves to Ron, then turns to the mysteriously unoccupied doorway.

Bellatrix lounges upon a sofa with one arm splayed across the back and her free hand clutching a glass of something on ice.  Her feet are perched upon an ottoman, heavy shackles too prominent not to draw the eye.  She is contemplating one of many family portraits on the far wall, another one with a dark blast mark over one of the faces.

"You're not much for socializing, I take it," says Bellatrix, and although her voice is back to where it's supposed to be, it has lost none of its power over her.

"It depends on the company," says Hermione, before she thinks better of it.

Bellatrix's lips twitch into a subtle smile.  "Now that's a compliment I shall take," she says.

"Was it your sister?" Hermione dares, for she has already dared to be here.  "In the pictures."

Bellatrix hums thoughtfully.  "Cissy cried and cried while Mother made us erase her," she says distantly.  She mimes flicking a wand at a handful of the photos.  "But I was angry.  Some shadow she chose for herself."

"And are you still angry?" Hermione wonders.  Her memory of Andromeda Tonks is a vague one.  Like a softer, saner Bellatrix, she thought at the time, but now the resemblance seems somehow less obvious.

"When you are too angry for too long," Bellatrix replies, with the faintest hint of her mocking singsong, "one day you find there is nothing left." 

She swirls her glass and takes a sip.  Hermione dares a few steps closer.  "You could make amends," she says.

Bellatrix chuckles again, and her soft smile turns sharp.  "A novel notion," she says sweetly.  "All the philosophers in the history of the world have nothing on your wisdom, Miss Granger."  She scoffs.  "How do you propose I go about it, Granger?"  She laughs again, hard and cold.  "Throw a party?"

Somehow, in spite of her shift in demeanour, Hermione sees that she has made some sort of meager progress.  Encouraged, she sits on the edge of the sofa, as far away from Bellatrix as she is able.  "The war is over," says Hermione, "and Andromeda has lost her family a second time, hasn't she?  Perhaps she'd be more amenable to an olive branch than you think."

Bellatrix affords her a sidelong glance, something like haughty amusement and muted interest in her gaze.  "Lucky me," she says dryly.  "Perhaps you hadn't noticed, but I'm not really the shoulder-to-cry-on type, Granger."

"Still," Hermione follows Bellatrix's gaze back to the portraits.  There's one where Bellatrix is in Slytherin robes, and though she bears her usual haughty smirk, there's something about her eyes that suggests she's struggling not to laugh. 

"Familiarity offers a different sort of comfort," she finishes her thought at last.  "Even if it's not exactly what you need."

"Ah," Bellatrix drawls thoughtfully as she swirls her glass.  "Hence your bumbling redheaded sweetheart?  Not that I had any interest in knowing, but I'd never have guessed at that tragic liaison if he hadn't arrived like a nasty blemish upon your arm."

And perhaps Hermione ought to say that Bellatrix has no right to say such a thing, that she just doesn't know him, or just simply that it's none of her business, but she doesn't much feel like saying any of that at the moment.  "It was a bit much," she agrees.

"For him?" Bellatrix scoffs.  "Not at all."  She takes a sip from her glass and sets it aside.  "A boy like that somehow catches onto a pretty girl?  Of course he wants to show off, if he's half a brain in his head. My question," she turns her attention to Hermione, and she leans in so closely Hermione feels the words in the crook of her neck, "is what the pretty girl was thinking in the first place."

Hermione turns her head, too curious to restrain herself, and finds Bellatrix regarding her intently, not quite smiling, lips parted just slightly.  It seems contrary to her nature to glow under such common praise, and utter madness that it is coming from Bellatrix Lestrange in the first place, and yet for all the pleasantness of the evening prior to this moment, there was no spark, nothing truly unforgettable.  Indeed, there has not been very much of that nature in Hermione's life for some time.

"Haven't you ever given something to someone just...because you knew he wanted it?" Hermione wonders.  "And you thought perhaps you ought to want it, too, but there was just something wrong with you?  And maybe if you tried..."

Bellatrix kisses her, and the world goes dark.

Perhaps time really does stop, Hermione thinks, or at least it slows down.  She can't hear the music or the chatter from the other room anymore, can't hear anything or see anything, and all she can feel is the warmth of Bellatrix's lips against hers, the spark it ignites in her, and the fabric of Bellatrix's gown beneath her own hands, grasped in shock.

Bellatrix pulls away, still not quite smiling.  "No," she replies.  "There's nothing that feels remotely like wanting."  Her lip curls, "Assuming you know what wanting feels like."

Hermione's eyes flutter open, just barely, and the world takes shape around them once more.  "Maybe I didn't, before," she breathes.

"And now?"  Bellatrix leans in closer, and she traces a finger along the line of Hermione's jaw.  It feels too familiar, reminds Hermione in a vivid flash of a time when she lay helpless beneath a madwoman and a monster, body contorted in a kind of anguish beyond description.

Hermione ought to leave.

She ought never to have come here, to this room or to this house.  She already did her time, mended her fences, and the others would have been fine without her.  Better off, even, without her sneaking off to play at something beyond her comprehension with a woman who thought nothing of torturing her not two years prior.

"Now I think I want something I shouldn't," Hermione whispers, perhaps a bit desperately.

"Hm," Bellatrix traces the line of her neck, the rise of her collarbone, the collar of her gown.  "And whatever shall you do, instead, I wonder?  Go back to the party and pretend to want something else?  Find out exactly how much you must diminish yourself to fit into the shadow of your homely redhead, for example?"

"He never tortured me," Hermione counters, but her words do not possess the bite she intends.

"Didn't he?" Bellatrix mocks.  "There are countless tortures far more insidious than mine."

Her lips are achingly close, and her body is poised to follow.  Hermione can feel warmth radiating from her, can feel the words Bellatrix speaks as though upon her own lips, can feel the shape of Bellatrix's body as though it were flush against hers already.

Perhaps she should care what has transpired between them, and between herself and Ron.  Perhaps she should listen to reason and return to the party and pretend to want until she learns how, because she gets the sense that doing that would be easier than whatever she is playing at now.

But Hermione has never felt anything like this before, and Bellatrix has told her that nothing feels remotely like wanting, and now that Hermione knows what it is to want, she is powerless to dismiss it.

Hermione leans in, tentatively, and Bellatrix closes the distance between them readily.  Again the music and the noise fade away, and the world grows somehow darker around them, aided perhaps by the curtain of Bellatrix's hair as it cascades over Hermione's shoulders.

Her kisses are hard, and harsh, and her hands are strong and well-practiced.  Each new sensation comes as a revelation to Hermione, and only leaves her wanting more.

"What will you say?" Bellatrix wonders almost cruelly against Hermione's neck.  Her hand finds its way beneath Hermione's skirts, and Hermione marvels at how desperately she wants to be touched when it has always been such a chore in the past.  "What will you say to your sad sweetheart?"

She should be disgusted.  With Bellatrix and with herself.  But Bellatrix shifts her weight, and Hermione hears the subtle clank of her metal shackles, and then Bellatrix slides her hand beneath the band of Hermione's underwear, and Hermione's vision blurs around the edges.

"Will you tell him?" Bellatrix continues as she examines the wetness between Hermione's legs.  She curls two fingers inside of Hermione, and a guttural moan escapes Hermione's throat without her permissin.  "Will you tell him that you never wanted him at all?  That nothing he's ever done has mattered to you?  That in all your days, poor, crazy Bella was the only one who could ever show you what it is to want?"

Hermione throws her head back, and, " _Yes_ ," she hisses.  She will say anything, think anything, allow anything, so long as this does not end, and she does not have to go back to the world where she was certain she would never know this feeling.

Bellatrix's movements are hard, and harsh, and Hermione's climax follows suit.  Her body convulses, and she wraps her arms about Bellatrix's shoulders and buries her face in Bellatrix's neck to keep from screaming.  Even after it has ended and the world has deigned to take shape around them once more, Hermione is trembling, shaking and shaken, and unwilling to face any facet of reality—the reality of what she has done, what she has wanted, and the reality that awaits her outside of this room.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels like the last chapter of this one, but who's to say?

For some time, Hermione had no memory of the night they spent at Malfoy Manor, now nearly two years prior.  It was like a dark spot in her mind.  She remembered listening to the radio with a sliver of hope like nothing she'd felt in ages, and then she remembered Harry, mad with the kind of excitement that frightens, and then there was Fenrir Greyback, leering and terrible and touching her, and then—nothing.  Nothing until the next morning in a house by the sea, all pale, delicate colours and distant, washed-out sounds.

Months later, after the whole ordeal had ended and Hermione was just beginning to feel normal again, the memory hit her, all in a rush, like an oncoming train.  She fell to her knees as a sob wracked her body, and she _remembered_.

She has relived her torment via Bellatrix Lestrange countless times since then.  She combs through the memory every so often, sometimes to dissect it, and other times to inflict it upon herself for some perceived slight. 

She has never focused much on hating Bellatrix for the memory.  Instead, she hates herself for forgetting, hates herself for what she still cannot remember.  Instead, she wonders what other horrors she has concealed from her own mind, for she does not trust her soft-hearted friends to tell her the entirety of the truth.  To this day she does not know whether she really lost consciousness, or whether there is more she ought to remember.

Now she relives the memory not by her own design, but because it has been thrust upon her.  Or perhaps this has been some new and terrible way of seeking it out to torment herself, practically throwing herself at its source as though this woman, who is so far removed from the monster Hermione remembers as to be virtually incomparable, might grant her clarity.

Distantly, she becomes aware of Bellatrix in the present still looming over her, stroking her hair and watching her with unmitigated fascination while she cries.

 _What else did you take?_ a shadow screeches in the recesses of her mind.  _Answer me!  Crucio!_

"There's a limit to anger," says Bellatrix in the present, distant and dreamlike compared to the shrieking counterpart in Hermione's memory.  "When you're too angry for too long, one day there is nothing left.  But regret?"  She hums, low and soft.  "You could drown in a sea of regret and never reach the bottom."

Hermione takes in a shuddering breath, closes her eyes against a fresh onslaught of tears.  _Liar,_ a voice cries from the past.  _Dirty, filthy liar!_   But it's quieter now, less real than the present moment, where the selfsame woman draws strands of Hermione's hair thoughtfully between her fingers and arranges them across the arm of the sofa where Hermione's head has come to rest.

"You regret now, don't you?" says Bellatrix.  "Now that it matters again."

"What?" Hermione breathes.  She is still trembling, she realizes as her body becomes more immediate, and Bellatrix's body atop hers feels warm and grounding.

"The memory," Bellatrix taps a finger gently against her temple.  "It's weak.  Comes and goes, I'll bet.  Doesn't even seem real to you, perhaps."

The memory.  "You're a Legilimens," Hermione guesses, and this, far more than anything else, feels like a violation.

"Don't upset yourself, Granger," Bellatrix teases, still bizarrely gently.  "After all, I was hardly trying.  You wear your thoughts awfully close to the surface, when you're off your guard."

Hermione swallows down a sickening feeling.  "And that night?" she manages.  She tried, she remembers, tried to grasp on to bits and pieces she had read and overheard about obscuring her thoughts, but she had never been trained, and then the blinding pain—

Bellatrix scoffs lightly.  "What precious information were you hoping to protect, Granger?" she wonders.  "Difficult though it might be for you to recall, there was only one piece of information I wanted from you on that occasion."

Hermione swallows again, struggles to even her breathing.  "And you'd have killed me to get it," she accuses, pitifully.

"Of course," Bellatrix replies.  She draws a strand of Hermione's hair between her fingers, and a chill runs down Hermione's spine, and she finds that it is impossible to tell which engenders the reaction, the horror or the comfort.  "Though I don't see how it matters now.  None of it matters now, does it?"

"How can you say that?" Hermione tries to demand, but her voice is broken, and she hasn't stopped shaking, no matter how hard she tries to steady herself.

Bellatrix inclines her head thoughtfully, and abandons stroking Hermione's hair in favour of tracing the trails that tears have left on her cheeks.  "Haunts you, does it, dearie?"

Hermione scoffs, a horrible, wet kind of sound.  "I _wish_ ," she hisses, shaking her head.  "I wish it haunted me, but what really haunts me?  I can't trust my own mind."  She thinks to reach, to gesture, but her arms are half-numb, barely responsive, and in the end they fall limp at her side.  "I was so hurt, and so frightened, that my mind just...blocked it out.  And what really haunts me," she almost laughs, almost cries, "is that my friends, the people I trust with my life, they wouldn't tell me!  They wouldn't tell me, and I still don't know, and it—"

She squeezes her eyes closed, weeps for an injury she has never had the heart to voice to the friends she condemns, for just as they have sheltered her, she has sheltered them from her ill-conceived contempt.  But it's there, still, more real to her than a memory of utter torment, and it's true, what she's said, that it haunts her far more frequently than the night at Malfoy Manor.

Bellatrix returns to stroking her hair, and Hermione loathes the way it soothes the worst of her anguish.  The world grows dark around the edges again as Bellatrix leans in closer, the dark curtain of her hair obscuring the portraits on the far wall and the half-forgotten sounds of the party she ought never to have left.

"I could give it to you," Bellatrix whispers, like an enticing secret.  "Supposing you don't mind the musings of a madwoman swimming around in that famous brain of yours."  She taps Hermione's temple, somehow both gentle and mocking.  "I remember that night _perfectly_."

The revelation, the offer, is enough to stun Hermione into stillness.  She opens her eyes and focuses her attention upon Bellatrix, for whatever it's worth in the looming darkness that surrounds them.  "You could?" she echoes, needlessly.

Bellatrix withdraws, just enough that Hermione can see her face, almost but not quite impassive.  "But here's the question, Granger," she continues.  "Do you really want to know?"

 _I want to know everything_ , she'd have said once, and almost says now, without thought.  But it's a curious notion, Bellatrix Lestrange posing such a question, and the absurdity of it is enough to give Hermione pause.

"The mind is a funny thing, Granger," says Bellatrix, like she's heard, and perhaps she has.  "I used to think like you do, that it was an obstacle to overcome."  She taps Hermione's temple again, and a subtle frown crosses her features.  "But the mind is a stronghold when the body is weak."  Then she withdraws her hand, and taps two fingers against her own temple.  "It shields you from the worst of your burdens."

Hermione hears herself exhale shakily, but she does not quite feel the breath in her own lungs.

Bellatrix looks up, then, suddenly, right over Hermione's head, and Hermione finds that she immediately misses the full force of Bellatrix's attention.  "Your sweetheart is searching for you," she says.

Hermione's heart jolts, all nerves and guilt and dread, and she pushes herself into a sitting position, suddenly acutely aware that her skirts are still bunched up at her hip, and the room around them would be very cold if not for Bellatrix's own flowing skirt to cover her.

She meets Bellatrix's gaze, now on more even footing, and still somehow it captivates her.  Bellatrix narrows her eyes and inclines her head curiously, a kind of silent question.

"Why have you done this?" Hermione wonders, plainly.  She is relieved to find that the wild timbre of her voice has steadied considerably, and it's neither a plea nor an accusation.  "Why would you want me?"

Bellatrix frowns thoughtfully, as though she has not thought to question it.  "Intellectual curiosity, perhaps."  She gives Hermione a brief once-over, more studious than anything.  "And certainly a desire not to let such a pretty girl to go waste on such a stupid boy."

Hermione lets out a huff of muted incredulity.  "And all your talk of blood purity?" she presses.  "You, the right hand of Lord Voldemort?  You, who still call me a Mudblood like it's a funny joke, and what?  Now it doesn't matter anymore?"

Bellatrix's lips twitch into a cold smile, and she leans in almost menacingly.  "I could give you that, too, if you like," she says.  She stands abruptly, one second there, the next, gone, and takes all her warmth with her, and Hermione struggles to straighten her skirts and Bellatrix storms across the room to the portraits on the far wall.

"Take all the memories I've got, Granger," says Bellatrix airily.  "See how you fare while they swim in your skull.  It doesn't matter anymore because everyone who cared is dead and gone," she points to a picture with two adults, two children, and one angry blast mark.  "And there is only Cissy left, who cares for her undeserving family, and Bella left, who cares for nothing."

Hermione stands, too, on shaking legs, and wonders vaguely how she will ever return to the party after all this.  "You don't mean to tell me you never cared," she says, not quite accusatorily, for there is no way of knowing what could turn Bellatrix Lestrange back into the monster she remembers.

Bellatrix turns on her sharply, but there is no hint of madness about her features.  Indeed, her dark eyes are unnervingly clear even in the dim light of the room.  "For such an infamously clever witch," she says coolly, "you can be quite dense.  If one path will grant you a life you know, with faces that are familiar and pain that is endurable, then of course you care for whatever will bring it about."

"But you don't care for what you've done," Hermione presses, not quite a question.  "You don't care for all the people you've hurt."

Bellatrix stalks towards her, with heavy footsteps that rattle the chains upon her ankles.  She comes to loom over Hermione, and when she speaks, her voice is low and icy calm.  "Regret will drown you if you let it, Granger," she says.  She traces the curve of Hermione's jaw with her fingertips.  "I did what suited me best at the time.  If that's not enough for you," she leans in, assumes a shadow of a smile that is all the more menacing, "then why are you still here?"

A memory flashes across the forefront of her mind, unbidden and unwelcome, of a madwoman's frenzied whispers and Ron's voice in the distance, desperately bellowing her name.  Are things so very different now, after all this time?

"I should get back," she breathes.

Bellatrix withdraws and straightens her posture, every bit the proud Black sister from the portrait.  "I suggest you tidy up before you return," she says, then, with a shadow of haughty amusement, amends, "unless you intend to make quite the statement."

Hermione feels her cheeks flush hot at the notion; yet, feeling quite mad even as the words pass her lips, she affords Bellatrix a shy and mischievous upward glance.  "Suppose I did," she dares.

Bellatrix's dark eyes flash with interest, and amusement settles more clearly upon her features.  "Well then," she says richly, "I'd say you ought to complete the picture."

Before Hermione even has time to register movement, Bellatrix is upon her.  She takes Hermione by the waist and draws the skin of Hermione's neck between her teeth, and Hermione cries out irreverently.  Oh, she should not allow this, should not have allowed any of it, but this is a mark that will linger, far more damning than the mere suggestion of her ruffled appearance.  Hermione has dared too far, once and then again, and now she is in too deep.

But when Bellatrix pulls away, Hermione follows as though drawn in by gravity, covers the crook of her neck with her hand even as the pleasure of the sensation still rolls over her in waves.  "Oh, you shouldn't have, I shouldn't have," she is vaguely aware of saying, shaking her head, spiraling back into the memory where Bellatrix screams and Ron bellows.

She fumbles for her wand, desperate to set herself right, and Bellatrix takes it from her before Hermione has even gotten a proper grip.  "Don't upset yourself, Granger," she says airily, and touches the tip of Hermione's wand to the mark she has surely left.  "I can erase it."

But she can't, not really, because Hermione will remember.  Bellatrix didn't leave a mark on her before, and she forgot.

"No," Hermione shakes her head, scarcely realizes she has spoken aloud.  She reaches for her wand and Bellatrix hands it over without resistance.  "No," she says again, more steadily.  She smoothes the wrinkles in her skirt and fixes her tousled hair, and then she arranges it so that it covers her neck.

She looks up at Bellatrix, who regards her curiously for a moment before turning her gaze toward the door.  "—anyone seen where Hermione got off to?" suddenly sounds loud and clear over the muted chatter.

"I'd better go," Hermione says, needlessly.  She turns away, cannot bear to linger another moment, cannot promise herself that she could resist even the slightest temptation to stay.

Her fingers touch the doorframe and she hesitates.  She can hear the voices of the other partygoers more clearly now, can make out the strange, jovial tune that the enchanted instruments play, wonders vaguely whether she's had too much to drink and fallen asleep, and she'll wake sore and stiff with her head resting on her arm atop the bar to find that she has had a particularly disquieting dream.

She turns over her shoulder once more, more than a little upset by the notion, to find Bellatrix still standing a short distance away, still quite solid and real as far as Hermione can tell, watching her with arms folded and head held high, all at once the portrait, the monster, and the shadow.  Bellatrix narrows her eyes and offers a subtle smile, and she taps her neck with two fingers, like she's heard, like she understands, and maybe she has, and maybe she does.

Hermione touches her own neck in the same spot, feels the tenderness and the faint indentation of teeth Bellatrix has left beneath her fingertips, and she arranges her hair to cover it once more before she passes through the doorway.


End file.
